John Kelly says ‘lack of ability to compromise’ led to Civil War

By Maggie Astor

Updated 11:06 pm, Monday, October 30, 2017

If, by appearing on Laura Ingraham’s show on Monday night, John Kelly was trying to do damage control after the indictments of three of President Trump’s associates were announced earlier in the day, it did not work.

Instead, Kelly, the White House chief of staff, resurrected the debate over Confederate monuments — previously fueled by his boss, Trump, over the summer — and the Confederacy itself. He called Robert E. Lee “an honorable man who gave up his country to fight for his state,” said that “men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand,” and argued that “the lack of ability to compromise caused the Civil War.”

Christina Wilkie, a reporter for CNBC, used Twitter to live-blog Monday’s interview, on the Fox News program “The Ingraham Angle.” Ms. Wilkie’s tweet quoting Kelly’s “lack of ability to compromise” statement spread quickly: “Wow. Gen. John Kelly just said ‘the lack of ability to compromise led to the Civil War.’ Compromise on what, exactly?”

The reaction was swift and unforgiving, with many commenters ridiculing Kelly for suggesting that slavery was an issue on which a compromise could or should have been reached.

Within less than two hours, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter Bernice King had weighed in on Kelly’s description of Robert E. Lee as “honorable.” “It’s irresponsible & dangerous, especially when white supremacists feel emboldened, to make fighting to maintain slavery sound courageous,” she tweeted.

Other people referred disapprovingly to Kelly’s reputation as a voice of reason and discipline within the Trump administration: the “adult in the room”; the person keeping, or at least trying to keep, Trump under control.

And many pointed out that, in fact, many attempts were made to avert the Civil War through compromise — that is, by agreeing to allow slavery in some places.